BEIJING: Poverty plagued China for thousands of years. Through generations of struggle after the founding of New China in 1949, the country had lifted 700 million out of penury by the end of 2012.
By then, China still had nearly 100 million people living under the poverty line, one ninth of the world’s total. About 100,000 villages were yet to be connected by paved roads; some 4,000 villages had no access to electricity; and 8.3 percent of the country’s rural households eked out a living in ramshackle, grass-thatched mud huts.
In November 2012, Xi Jinping became China’s top leader, and he inherited a mission China had striven to achieve for generations, which is eradicating absolute poverty. The Communist Party of China (CPC) aimed to reach the goal by the end of 2020.
“To achieve this goal, China has to lift 10 million people out of poverty every year,” said Eduardo Regalado, senior researcher at Cuba’s International Policy Research Center. “That is, 20 people every minute.”
Targeted poverty alleviation: At the end of 2012, Xi braved the ghastly winter temperatures to visit the villages of Luotuowan and Gujiatai, impoverished places set deep in the Taihang Mountains of Hebei Province.
It was the first of a myriad of inspection tours dipping into the country’s underdeveloped regions for Xi as the top Chinese leader.
Chatting with villagers, Xi was particularly concerned with difficulties they faced in their daily lives, such as problems concerning their income, food, education and medical care.
“We should seek facts from truth; guidance and development must reflect the local conditions,” Xi said. “This is what I mean by targeted poverty alleviation.”
In an effort to meticulously tackle impoverishment in various locations, the authorities need to have a full grasp of the conditions on the ground. Therefore, China launched an unprecedented project to compile a database of every single underprivileged citizen.
In 18 months, the country had a complete nationwide register of its poor population. It was the first time in history that an all-encompassing poverty database had been compiled.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
